THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

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Carlos Gonzalez  00:00

And the main thing I’ve learned over all these years is that we don’t make it through life on our own. We need a lot of help from others. Learning is a communal act. It’s not an individual act. Being a decent person is also a communal act. Or you are who you are based on who’s around you more so than just your pure effort.

Achim Nowak  00:25

Welcome to the my fourth act podcast. I’m your host, achi Nova, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. Well, I am delighted to welcome Carlos Gonzalez to the my fourth act podcast. Carlos has been an associate professor of English at Miami Dade College for over 30 years. He describes himself on LinkedIn in his profile as a professor of joy, grief, wonder, listening movement and city. I love reading that, because as you’re listening to this, you’ll probably realize already that he’s not your traditional English teacher. Carlos Gonzalez’s expansive view of how a teacher serves is informed by his passion for mindfulness, physical exercise, nature and deep personal exploration. In addition to his work at MDC Miami Dade College, Carlos teaches meditation and writing in South Florida correctional facilities through exchange for change, a Miami based non profit. He also facilitates letter exchange programs between his students at NBC and incarcerated humans. And just this year, Carlos became a grandfather. Hi, Carlos,

Carlos Gonzalez  02:10

Hi Achim.

Achim Nowak  02:11

I am delighted to have you as a guest. I look forward to this rich conversation. I hope our listeners is based on this introduction. It’s going to be a rich one. You live in Miami, and you are one of those Miamians who was born in Cuba, and you came to Miami at a certain age. I’m going to ask you a question to ask all guests, and I was wondering, are you going to answer this from it before Miami or after Miami perspective? But I was curious, as a young boy or teenager growing up, when you thought about what you wanted to do with your life, what were you thinking about?

Carlos Gonzalez  02:51

Wow. Question is interesting, because for a big chunk of my childhood, part of it was surviving. There was a lot of uncertain I was born in Cuba. I left when I was six, and we moved to Spain before coming to the United States. The entire time early childhood, even before leaving, was framed by the idea of exile. My father had tried leaving Cuba much earlier than when I was born, because of circumstances, ended up having to wait, and by the time that we left, he had to spend about two years in a labor camp. My first sort of my impression of childhood was always precarious. We were food insecure at times, and when we left, we left basically with nothing, and moved to Spain, and then they’re faced again, insecurity and having to move very frequently. My mother got sick. It was always a question of like, you know, where are we going to go and how are we going to make it? At some point in the United States, things settled a little bit after a couple of years, one settled my dream. It was always science based. Interestingly, I like to observe the weather. I would go outside and write the weather the way I would experience it, and all these, like weather reports. And then I would tinker with all sorts of, you know, like radios that would break down. I would take them apart. I love magnets and I love being outside. Being outside, to me, was always a grounding. It was an experience as when we were in Spain, we ended up my sister and I in a boarding school for some time because our parents couldn’t take care of us during that time, we ended up in the mountains near Madrid. I still like pine trees bring back memories of just feeling like moments of being at ease. And so nature, to me as a child, was a respite, and it was. Something of a reminder of something beautiful I’ve always had, like a nature sort of bent, an observational one.

Achim Nowak  05:08

When I think of Professor of English, I think of that as sort of a brain event, right? And that and nature are not mutually exclusive. But I’m also listening to you, and it’s funny, I’m we’re recording with me. I’m in Portugal now. This is the country of my childhood. I have a residence here, again, after many decades, English is not my first language. English is not your first language. Both you and I function really well in this language. But in my mind, there’s a certain audacity in saying I’m an exile. I came from Cuba by a Spain to South Florida. Let me teach English like, How did you land there?

Carlos Gonzalez  05:50

I think I landed there through the world, book, encyclopedia, because my parents, you know, their dream was for us to better than they did. They poured themselves into as much as they could. My mom had a sixth grade education, and my dad a third grade formal education. One of the first things that they were able they bought for us was an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia was important. I remember getting that Encyclopedia of it was really for my sister, but I think it was like I was nine or 10, and I would just devour the encyclopedia, especially the one on electricity that we look up everything electrical, because I was into gadget. I had a love of reading, which translated over time in my schooling into a capacity to write, even though I was an easel student, you know, which was an interesting experience coming, you know, like learning, you know, having that experience early on, I ended up in by high school in honors classes, and I took on to just reading and writing. And then I bumped into a professor my first year of college that was completely out of the box, and he had us doing all sorts of projects. They were all it was writing based. And we would, I remember, interviewing all sorts of people in the community, and then writing about it. And then we would workshop the writing in class, and I fell in love with English in that ENC 1101, class, I think there that the seed was really planted and watered, and from there on, it was kind of like, oh yeah, this is something as an exile i can do, and I could do well.

Achim Nowak  07:38

I too was blessed in high school, I had an incredibly wonderful French teacher, and he was the teacher I remember, and his passion for teaching and his passion for us and I just reminds me of the impact a teacher can have a student and the student’s life. Right for our listeners who don’t know what Miami Dade College is, it’s a public university. It’s a very special University in South Florida. Would you paint a picture for us and describe what makes that such a unique environment in which you get to work?

Carlos Gonzalez  08:14

Miami Dade College. It is an incredibly special place. It opens doors for people like myself and others who come from backgrounds that are not academically grounded or driven or Yeah, based the college is was a community college. So it started out as a community college in 1960 and so it was offered as a gateway into the four year schools for students who weren’t able to sort of make it in some for whatever reason, either it could be monetary or just maybe their SAT scores over time. That’s changed. The college has now offers four year degrees, and we’re not a research institution. We’re a teaching institution, but we do cater to students who are often non traditional I’ve taught all sorts of people, you know, 18 year olds, 17 year olds, that’s mostly what I’m teaching right now to older people who come from other countries. For a long time, I taught in our campus in Little Havana, taught mostly refugees and Fresh Off the Boat or crossing the river or whatever it was that they did to get to my classroom. I’ve taught elderly people and in their late 70s who wanted to come back and and get this experience. So it’s been the college opens its doors to many people. By doing so impacts the community in such a way that it plants the seeds of education, possibility that a place like, let’s say, FIU wouldn’t be able to do or University of Miami. And so. We are the people’s college, or, as we’re called, democracy’s College. We’re very much grounded in that social experiment of spreading education to as many people as we can, because we know that opens up doors and it opens up minds and hearts. I

Achim Nowak  10:19

am struck by just the longevity of your tenure. You know, it is over 30 years. Did I say that correctly when it introduced you? Yes, yes. I’m going to ask you an almost impossible question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. If you think over that whole span, what are some things that you have learned you, Carlos, about life and about yourself through the kind of teaching that you get to do at Miami Dade College.

Carlos Gonzalez  10:50

And the main thing I’ve learned over all these years is that we don’t make it through life on our own. We need a lot of help from others. Learning is a communal act. It’s not an individual act. Being a decent person is also a communal act. Or you are who you are based on who’s around you more so than just your pure effort. And so I’ve had the privilege of working with people who’ve become my friends that have shaped my life. I started working at the college when I was 26 I had the fortune of joining a community within the college called the Earth Ethics Institute. I was in on the beginning of that community and met people who were older than me, who became my mentors because of them, my teaching shifted dramatically. I became a different kind of teacher, much more community based, much more interactive. I guess I take that to my own life and realizing that I seek out connections to other people, not so much for other than living well. Not just me living well, but everybody living well. I know that my sense of wellness and freedom and goodness cannot be experienced in a bubble, but it has to be shared.

Achim Nowak  12:19

What I’m hearing as you’re talking is that you’ve been in situations where almost what it traditionally means to be a teacher is maybe trend is transcended, become something else. Relationships change. It’s true. In my work as a corporate coach, I’m tired to do something that a lot of my colleagues, if someone become friends and in the lines, you know, it’s it’s not completely broken down. But I also think in some cultures, because you’re an instant international playground, people can almost put a teacher in a certain box. The teacher is the authority. We look up to the teacher. We’re perhaps afraid of the teacher. How do you break down sort of stories that people have about what a teacher like you should be like and act like,

Carlos Gonzalez  13:05

yeah, again, I’ve been blessed right by people. I’ll name some names like Joni win, who I met years and years ago, and through her just tapped into the work of Bob Moses, who was a civil rights leader with SNCC in the 60s, and onto his at the end of his life with the Algebra Project and the work of Ella Baker, those people really understood the power of community learning, Which does not center the teacher as the only wise person in the room, and then when you start doing that, people start showing up. So over the years, I’ve had a number of students who’ve shown up in that environment. I have friends who are my students that go back like 20 years to and that we keep in touch because of what happened in in the classrooms that I was in during that most of that time I’ve worked. I’ve always co taught with people. So I one of the things that I seek out is like, can I teach this class with somebody else? And so even in the teaching mode, there’s usually some assistance from someone else, and in that form, we we create community. But you’re right, their students come into the classroom and they expect you to just tell them what to do, and that’s what I’ve been taught to be like, and that’s what I’ve been working on for the last maybe two and a half decades to undo within my class. So and which means, like, how do we assess a class? How do we assess learning when it’s from a top down mode, you know, so that you’re not just handing out grades, you’re actually collaborating on how we know what we know? It’s complicated, because the institution doesn’t recognize that. And the institution is traditional in that way. But there are some of us within the institution that work out in another model, right? And that that’s what I’ve been trying to do. So

Achim Nowak  15:09

take us to two different extreme experiences you want to like all of us, regardless of what the profession is, tend to have moments of where we go, Wow, this moment is why I do the work I do I want. This is why I love what I get to do. But many wells are the moments where we go. The hell am I doing this? Please get me out of here. And that can especially happen in in more formal institutions and structures. I have a hunch. You’ve had both if you had to describe a moment where it was almost like the epiphany of why you do what you do, describe what that moment was. But also, if you had to have a moment where you go, I don’t know, I keep doing this. Describe that as well.

Carlos Gonzalez  15:55

I’ve had a bunch of those moments, those person Yes, I have that almost every single semester, I come home and I’m like, Yes, that’s it, but some like pivotal moments, I would say I was teaching an ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 which are the first level college writing classes with a friend of

Achim Nowak  16:15

mine. For people who don’t know what is ENC one and two, this is

Carlos Gonzalez  16:19

college level writing one and two. It’s basic essay writing and doing research. I was working with a friend. His name is Alex Salinas. We were collaborating. This was back in like 2006 or seven. We had created this curriculum in conjunction with public school in Overtown called Phyllis Wheatley, and we got permission from the principal. She gave us a classroom. We connected to a cohort of kids that were called the I Have a Dream Program, and these kids were getting support from the time that they entered in in first grade all the way through college. That’s another story, but we connected our students an honors class that we would have for two years. We basically taught our class part of half of our class, half the time at Phyllis Wheatley, that took that was like a two year process of working with, of literally taking our students there them having these are predominantly Hispanic kids in a predominantly African American neighborhood. We did gardening, we read together, and then we would run class. So we would be reading, work on understanding institutional races, the impact of the highways that neighborhood, the economics of the neighborhood, and how that impacted the school, the difference between that school and schools at St Kendall had different kinds of funding, so we started it just opened up, and from that, a group of students just emerged that are these are the students that now, 20 years later, 27 years later, they’re still involved in doing all sorts of interesting work. And it connects back to Phyllis Wheatley, which led us eventually to Nicaragua, because we did another project in Nicaragua based on that. So there are countless moments for me that affirm this has been a beautiful use of my life, and I’m grateful for it now. What are some moments I have those moments every year? So every year we have convocation at the college, and they gather in this big in our auditorium or in our gym, and they bring in all these speakers, and it’s a deadly meeting because it’s rah, rah, rah. It’s just a lot of noise, which doesn’t get to the core of what I feel is the learning and the teaching in the community, it’s overwhelming in that way. So I’ve had those so just to be very honest, yes, I’ve had two instances where I’ve almost been fired. Initially, it was I had a supervisor, a chairperson, who wanted to did not like my syllabus and wanted to revise it, and I just got this is early on looking back at it, I would have gone about this differently, but we got into a battle, and the battle was such that I was threatened with being taken to the board of the college to be fired if I didn’t change my syllabus. And it was a terrible experience because it happened early on in my time at Miami Dade. But thankfully, as a result of that battle, during that time, we actually organized our labor union, and my case was actually a central talking point of why. We needed protection from our own people, labor people, to protect ourselves from people just infringing our academic freedom. That was like a souring point, but it was also an interesting point of like, the importance, again, of not doing things just on your own.

Achim Nowak  20:20

At what point did mindfulness and meditation become important to you? Number one, and also, it’s not necessarily obvious how, as an English professor, you bring that to your work. Some curious also about how you then link it to how you serve your students and communities.

Carlos Gonzalez  20:43

In my late 20s, I became interested in Buddhism. I came from a very fundamentalist Christian background, and from my late 20s, teens to the my late 20s, and as I transitioned out of that, I bumped into Buddhism. I read a lot of Zen Buddhism, and eventually I’ve met a friend at school who is a Tibetan Buddhist, and was introduced to Tibetan Buddhism through him. I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, but have been deeply affected by Buddhism, so there’s always been an interest since that time, in the impact of my thoughts on my physical life, and how meditation actually does things to us that from a traditional like Western perspective, We don’t consider in 2013 I had a mental health crisis where I had a series of panic attacks, which I didn’t know at the time. I was having a panic attack, ended up in the hospital a couple of times. Was having a heart attack. I was going through a lot of grief. My mother had died the year before. It was a lot of unresolved issues in our relationship, a lot of past trauma that hadn’t really processed and that I’m still processing. I was unable to leave my house for months, and I started practicing yoga. And the minute I started practicing yoga, I I felt, Oh, wait. I feel that this is right. And my nervous system started responding very clear way. And over time, I developed a yoga practice that was always breath based, which again tied back to my meditation practice. Couple years later, I was teaching yoga, and then I shattered my elbow. That kind of threw a monkey wrench a little bit on my physical yoga practice. But I was continuing my breath work, and then the pandemic hit. And once the pandemic hit, I did a mindfulness meditation training to be able to teach mindfulness. I’ve used that, or transition that in the prison work that I’ve been doing because I started doing the prison work, as you alluded to, as a yoga teacher, and then when the pandemic hit, that stopped, when we were able to go back, I actually did not return to teaching yoga, but I went back more teaching mindfulness. But the mindfulness has been part of my life for a long time, but it became much more grounded and grounded in the body in 2013 the whole thing with panic and anxiety.

Achim Nowak  23:31

Yeah, I appreciate you giving me some of that background that I didn’t know, and so many people that I know in my own life and respect have found their way to mindfulness because of stress or because their life seemed and felt unmanageable and and that the very simple practices just made life easier. However, right? For me, I don’t think it’s obvious, because you could have just been this English professor when you did college. So the fact that you discover new things for yourself. And I want to talk about more exchange for change, which is the container for the prisoner work. So to me, it’s not an automatic thing that we then put all of that to work. And one reason I want to talk to you because I leave my sense of user. You’re an explorer, an investigator, and who then communicates that and shares it with others. Again, give us a snapshot first of exchange for change, which is the organization of nonprofit based in South Florida that does the work in prisons. So for listeners who don’t know what that is, what would you like them to know about exchange for change?

Carlos Gonzalez  24:39

So exchange for change is a small nonprofit held together by this incredible woman named Kathy Claridge who had this vision of bringing writing into the prisons. The organization is now over 10 years old. What it’s done is that it brings in. A lot of academics, but non academics as well, to teach classes inside the prison that are pretty much the same classes that people have in the university setting. I met Kathy at an award ceremony for community service. We were both getting at some award. When I heard her speak, I immediately knew that I wanted to work with her, because I knew that I wanted to learn some things as well, and I offered to do that, but I told her that I didn’t want to teach writing. I wanted to teach yoga because I was up to my ears with writing and reading papers at school. And she agreed, as long as I had like, a journaling, like component in my yoga classes, of course. So that’s how I started working with exchange for change. It’s exchange for changes in several prisons and a jail. It’s in Everglades correctional homestead, and there’s a prison in Avon Park, and then there’s the jail that the county uses of Guilford. I think that’s what it’s called. And so we offer a number of classes in all of those institutions. I’ve been doing that for about 10 years. I

Achim Nowak  26:14

through you. I have the pleasure of meeting Kathy. You have the opportunity to visit some of the prisons and meet some people who are incarcerated there. So I have a sense of powerful just that experience can be. But I also know, for example, it’s it takes a commitment just to get in the car, to get to the prison, to be allowed to come in the security checks. So this is not just like about driving down the street and teaching a little class in the community center. There is a commitment that it requires of you to show up and do this work. What are some things that you receive back from being in a prison teaching yoga and mindfulness there, given the effort it takes on your part to get yourself to actually show up there,

Carlos Gonzalez  27:07

these people are no different than me, nor you. So every time I go there, I see myself, and I often ask myself, what would I want and what would I need? I go serve myself in that way, like, if we’re going to put it in, like, what do I literally get from this? I learned resilience this two weeks ago. I’ve been playing with this game that the women taught me, and the game is like, what are you doing today? And so the game goes, you ask the person, what are you doing today? And the answer is going to be that you tell them what you’re going to do, but not inside the prison. It’s like what you’re doing outside. And so they go shopping, they go do their nails, they go to the beach, they go dancing. You know, you know, when they told me that they do this frequently, I thought, wow, this is the power of the imagination. I thought, how often am I stuck in my own box of my own making, and also the making of my context of which I’m in? The first step to get out of that box is to like, imagine something outside of that. They teach me things like that. It’s like, how can somebody who has been sentenced to life continue to play that game? They continue to play that game because they’re not giving up. They’re not giving up. What a powerful gift for anyone. But I’m I always think I’m so lucky that I get to receive that and many other things from them.

Achim Nowak  28:47

I was thinking I listened to you, just the more I expose myself to people who are not within my box, the more I give myself permission to step outside of my box, right? If I hang out only with people who are in the same box, you know, it’s not a really fun box for a long time. You know, it becomes a prison. No, I if we take, if we take that game that the women taught you, and, you know, thinking you’ve been teaching for over 30 years. This is called the fourth act podcast. We talk about vision and dreaming. Are there things that deep down with Carlos go covid? It would be fun to do this sometime, or this is something I’ve always wanted to do. Or what would happen if I did this?

Carlos Gonzalez  29:41

You know, before I started teaching at Miami Dade, I was in the process of exploring the possibility of going to seminary. I was Episcopalian at the time, and really exploring that. And then we got pregnant, let’s say we if. We got pregnant and we needed health insurance. That’s how I ended up at Miami Dade.

Achim Nowak  30:09

It wasn’t I love what a deep person you are. Carlos, yeah, no. It was no way.

Carlos Gonzalez  30:14

It was just we needed. I needed to pay for this pregnancy, and I didn’t have any money for this, so I needed insurance. Okay, let me find a place where I could get insurance. And so, seminary, you know, that’s been a draw. And so as I come to the end of my time at Miami Dade, I’ve been exploring actually a return to that, although, strangely enough, it’s felt as if I actually made the best choice of not ever going to seminary, because I’ve been a very secular person, and I’ve enjoyed the secularity of my career and of my life. And I think I would have probably like revolted against something other than that, but I felt that my classrooms were always sacred. It’s always had a holy, sacred space that we create, you know, and again, not from a religious perspective, but as I end my time at Miami Dade, I’m thinking that I might actually want to explore further training, and I’ve actually considered chaplaincy, which, you know, it’s not quite else, it’s sort of out of the box, but not quite. It’s still involved with some form of teaching, but there’s presence. And so I’ve been exploring that, seeing how I might do more of that kind of work and much more explicit inner work. Because although I do inner work in my class, you know, I still have to teach writing.

Achim Nowak  31:56

I know you have grandchildren, and that is a milestone, milestone for any parent. I don’t have grandchildren, but I’m curious, what’s it like to be a grandfather. What’s it like to engage with your grandchildren? Many people say that the grandchildren are a lot more fun than your actual children. I know you’re very susceptible to energy and energy impacts. You just give us a snapshot of what that part of your life is like.

Carlos Gonzalez  32:13

I never, I mean, I always thought when people talked about the grandkids like, oh yeah. And then it happened, I was all about boundaries. very soon after the first disappeared, and I thought about these little ones, and I thought like, what is it that I want to spend my time with doing these immediate years that are so formative for them, and I’ve made a very conscious choice that they’re actually at the center of my energy levels, Like I will prioritize the ones that I have. I have three, actually grandchildren. I figure that that’s an investment in a way that will it’s like a book that will outlive this physical form. It’s a form of continuation. There’s many, there many forms of how we continue our physical presence into the future, and this is one of them. I’m trying to be a presence for them that’s much wiser than I was when my children were that age. I’m trying to provide gifts for them of presence and and love. And so a lot of my time that my mornings are framed around caregiving. So I take care of one of my grandchildren from like 830 to about 1130 every day during the week, I’ve shifted my work schedule around that. It’s made everything tighter so there isn’t a definite energy expenditure, but it’s something that I cherish. I this kind of work is invisible to our society. Our society does not cherish this. We’re not set up where parents or grandparents are given time to do this, we don’t invest in any of this, and it’s to our detriment. So

Achim Nowak  34:25

if you were to put into words some wisdom that you would like to share with your grandchildren, maybe things you would your parents could have told you, but they were not able to what they were. They didn’t have that consciousness. What would you say to your three grandchildren to help guide them, to help send them forward to have rich and satisfying and purposeful lives. Love

Carlos Gonzalez  34:52

yourself completely, absolutely and unconditionally. There is. Nothing wrong with you. You are whole. Always been whole, and always will be whole.

Achim Nowak  35:08

Nice for our listeners who are curious about your work, whether at Miami Dade College or exchange for change or anywhere else or your service. Are there any places that you would like to send them to that they could check out to learn more about what you do?

Carlos Gonzalez  35:26

Sure? I mean, I’m on link. I’m not on a lot of social media, but I am on LinkedIn, believe it or not, and they could find me on LinkedIn. I also have medium presence. I am on medium, but

Achim Nowak  35:39

under Carlos Gonzalez, or Carlos

Carlos Gonzalez  35:42

Gonzalez, yeah, and but LinkedIn is they need if they want to message me, if they want to talk to me, I actually have a yoga service practice that I do and that I’ve worked with, generally older men like myself and older and usually people who are attorneys and executives will want to work on their bodies, but also mostly on the sense of ease and and peace. Inwardly

Achim Nowak  36:13

beautiful. Carlos so audience, Carlos Gonzalez, Associate Professor of the immediate college. I have followed him on LinkedIn, so if I can find him, you can find him. And thank you so much for the gift of this conversation. Carlos, it was a pleasure.

Carlos Gonzalez  36:32

Thank you, Achim. It was my pleasure to be with you, and I love you.

Achim Nowak  36:36

Love you too. And bye for now. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my fourth act podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim novak.com it’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors see you there and bye for now.